Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today's dev diary is going to be a bit of a grab bag, as we're going to talk about features in the 1.5 'Banks' update that weren't quite large enough to get their own dev diary, but are still significant enough that we want to highlight them. All features listed in this dev diary are part of the free Banks update rather than the Utopia expansion. There are of course many other minor features, tweaks and fixes in Banks that did not make the cut for this dev diary but will be covered in the full patch notes once we're closer to release.


Empire-wide Food
Probably one of the most hotly requested features since the release of the game, we've changed food in 1.5 so that it is no longer local to planets. Instead, all food produced by planets goes into a 'global' food stockpile, which is used to feed the entire empire. The maximum size of this stockpile depends on your Food Stockpiling policy, and once your food stockpile is full, any additional food produced is instead converted into faster Pop growth across the empire at a rate relative to the size of the population (so an excess of 5 food/month will produce much more growth in a 10 Pop empire than in a 100 Pop empire). Conversely, if the stockpile runs out and food growth is negative, the empire will suffer starvation, halting all Pop growth and applying increasingly severe happiness penalties for all biological Pops.

Terraforming Candidates
As explained in earlier dev diaries, one of the decisions taken early on when it comes to terraforming in Stellaris is to not have every planet be terraformable. This is both for practical reasons (a Stellaris galaxy can contain thousands upon thousands of planets, and having them all be inhabited would be completely unfeasible from a gameplay perspective) and thematic ones, as we want habitable worlds to feel rare and special. However, this means that one of the great staples of sci-fi - terraforming Mars - isn't possible in Stellaris. To resolve this, we've introduced a new type of anomaly called a 'Terraforming Candidate'. Sometimes when surveying Barren worlds, you will find ones that while they do not support life, could theoretically do so if you possess the right technology. Once you have unlocked the Climate Restoration technology, you will be able to terraform these worlds into habitable planets. Mars will always be a Terraforming Candidate, and you will be able to find randomly generated Terraforming Candidates when exploring the rest of the galaxy.

War Demand Costs
A frequent complaint about the mid and late game in Stellaris is that the warscore costs for taking planets simply do not scale well to the size of lategame wars. You can have a gigantic conflict involving dozens or hundreds of planets that results in only a few planets exchanging hands at the end. To address this, we've rebalanced war demands to still be quite expensive in the early game (when conquering a handful of planets is a significant increase in power) but added numerous ways to reduce the cost as the game progresses in the form of traditions and technologies, allowing for vast swathes of territory to change hands in late-game wars.

Stone Age Primitives
Having Stone Age primitives use a system of modifiers and tile blockers always felt a bit odd, owing to the fact that it is a legacy system designed before pre-sentients and later primitive civilizations were given proper Pops. For 1.5, we've reworked Stone Age civilizations to use the same systems as regular primitives, meaning they have Pops, can be studied and conquered using armies.

Picking Room Backgrounds
Another occasionally requested feature has been the ability to pick your own room background when designing your species, instead of having it automatically generated by your ethics. In 1.5, you will be able to select your room background in the Ruler customization screen. We've also added a new room background in a Hive Mind style.

That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about the new music and sounds coming in Banks and Utopia, as well as showing off the Music Player that will be included with the free update.

 

[TheDungen]

Nah, Mars is a much better candidate. 38% gravity is more than enough to prevent organ shutdown -- the worry is that it won't build up enough bone density to let people go back to Earth after living there for too long.

The lack of a magnetic field isn't a real problem since if you can replace the atmosphere (which is much easier than somehow altering Venus's -- it has enough frozen CO2 to get the pressure up without even adding anything external) it can block the radiation for you using relatively inexpensive modifications. You'll have to maintain the atmosphere but only on a very minor level -- it takes millions of years for the solar wind to strip it so even if you completely forgot you'd have millions of years before it became uninhabitable again.

Or alternatively, you can make an artificial magnetic field using superconductive conduits circling the planet which would double as a planetary energy distribution network.

Venus, on the other hand...
(1) Also has no magnetic field, and as a consequence no water.
(2) Has a really hot, thick, and toxic atmosphere.
(3) Has a day/night cycle that, if problem 2 was solved, would make it uninhabitable anyway.

Strategies for terraforming Venus require things like 'pulverizing the crust to a depth of 1 km'. It's ridiculous.

Venus' lack of water has to do with the fact that it has it's carbon in it's atmosphere rather than in sediments. Thus oxygen binds to carbon instead of to hydrogen and thus you get loads of hydrogen gas which gets depleted by solar wind magnetic field or no magnetic field. It's simply to light.

And NASA disagrees that 38% is enough to even prevent basic organ failure much less fetal development. The "go to earth" thing would be an issue for even Venus at 91% of earths gravity, at 38% it becomes unfixable.
Every time NASA has done a study on prolonged exposure to low grav environment they have been shocked that the results were even worse than they expected them to be.

Actually making Venus deposit it's carbon as sediments (the way earth has, remember earth and Venus has basically the same amount of carbon, it's just that on earth only 3/10'000 carbon molecules are in the atmosphere) is much easier than adding one to mars, even if it just means extracting things that are already there. Sedimentation of the carbon of Venus can be made into a self-sustaining process by the use of specifically created algae (or seeding algae if it turns out as some scientists have suggested that they already exist) for the task.

1) No but it has loads of oxygen, and hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, 60% of our galaxy is made out of hydrogren, meanwhile you'd need to add loads of different gasses that are far rarer to mars to give it a reasonable atmosphere.
2) Yeah hence why you seed the upper atmosphere where conditions are barring the lack of water close to tropical conditions on earth, it's basically the perfect greenhouse just add water (actually just add hydrogen because as I have already said oxygen is already abundant).
3)Is still easier to solve than mars' gravity issue. Which you just handwave away despite NASA pretty much saying that it means colonisation of mars is suicidal.

No all it requires is the deploying of carbon capture technology, technology which we are already developing because our own greenhouse problems. This is just the same thing on a bigger scale. Best part, the carbon is a resource, you can use carbon dioxide, sunlight and heat all available at the surface of Venus, to create fuel, or hydrocarbon plastic materials.

Terraforming Venus is much more viable (well obviously since terraforming mars would require artificial gravity, which we have no idea how to do) and pays for itself.
Neither is great but Venus is doable, Mars is a pipedream.

 

[terrycloth]

Actually making Venus deposit it's carbon as sediments (the way earth has, remember earth and Venus has basically the same amount of carbon, it's just that on earth only 3/10'000 carbon molecules are in the atmosphere) is much easier than adding one to mars, even if it just means extracting things that are already there. Sedimentation of the carbon of Venus can be made into a self-sustaining process by the use of specifically created algae (or seeding algae if it turns out as some scientists have suggested that they already exist) for the task..

They suggested this in 1961 before we knew enough about Venus to realize it wouldn't work.

To make mars livable with breathing masks all you need to do is heat up the surface enough to melt dry ice.

The gravity thing is the real sticking point, and I don't know where you're getting your information. What I can find on NASA's stance is that they're worried about the *prolonged weightlessness during the flight to Mars* but are confident that they can solve the problem by 2030.

 

[ATP Kraken]

Custom rooms... I sense a room mod on the horizon.

Your senses did not befall you! After I decode the new format (which probably hasn't changed, see ruler clothing) it will happen.

 

[Zarpaulus]

Venus' lack of water has to do with the fact that it has it's carbon in it's atmosphere rather than in sediments. Thus oxygen binds to carbon instead of to hydrogen and thus you get loads of hydrogen gas which gets depleted by solar wind magnetic field or no magnetic field. It's simply to light.

And NASA disagrees that 38% is enough to even prevent basic organ failure much less fetal development. The "go to earth" thing would be an issue for even Venus at 91% of earths gravity, at 38% it becomes unfixable.
Every time NASA has done a study on prolonged exposure to low grav environment they have been shocked that the results were even worse than they expected them to be.

Actually making Venus deposit it's carbon as sediments (the way earth has, remember earth and Venus has basically the same amount of carbon, it's just that on earth only 3/10'000 carbon molecules are in the atmosphere) is much easier than adding one to mars, even if it just means extracting things that are already there. Sedimentation of the carbon of Venus can be made into a self-sustaining process by the use of specifically created algae (or seeding algae if it turns out as some scientists have suggested that they already exist) for the task.

1) No but it has loads of oxygen, and hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, 60% of our galaxy is made out of hydrogren, meanwhile you'd need to add loads of different gasses that are far rarer to mars to give it a reasonable atmosphere.
2) Yeah hence why you seed the upper atmosphere where conditions are barring the lack of water close to tropical conditions on earth, it's basically the perfect greenhouse just add water (actually just add hydrogen because as I have already said oxygen is already abundant).
3)Is still easier to solve than mars' gravity issue. Which you just handwave away despite NASA pretty much saying that it means colonisation of mars is suicidal.

No all it requires is the deploying of carbon capture technology, technology which we are already developing because our own greenhouse problems. This is just the same thing on a bigger scale. Best part, the carbon is a resource, you can use carbon dioxide, sunlight and heat all available at the surface of Venus, to create fuel, or hydrocarbon plastic materials.

Terraforming Venus is much more viable (well obviously since terraforming mars would require artificial gravity, which we have no idea how to do) and pays for itself.
Neither is great but Venus is doable, Mars is a pipedream.

How exactly do you plan to make algae that can survive 462 C heat, 93 atmospheres of pressure, and an obscene amount of sulfuric acid vapor?

 

[Risa]

My worst fear becomes true.

In1.4, you can easily set up your new planet at +10 food, which doubles growth speed in that planet. Meanwhile you can have your full grown planets at about +0 to +2 food. Now in 1.5, you won't be able to set up such local growth boom. To get double growth speed, you will have to give pops on full-grown planets similar level of massively excessive food, even though they don't grow anymore.

I didn't think global food was a good idea. I still do not think so.

 

[Maeltne]

So you have a reserve in case you start losing food (due to your farm worlds being blockaded for instance).

I love the thought of blockade mechanics! Can you share some more details!

Thanks!

 

[Secret Master]

Instead, all food produced by planets goes into a 'global' food stockpile, which is used to feed the entire empire.

Question: Can I still create Gulag worlds like this and prevent them from leeching food from the empire?

Under current rules, I can starve slaves as long as I am willing to deal with malcontent slaves and the fact that they won't breed without food.

Can I still do something like this? Or am I forced to feed all biological POPs in the empire?

 

[LordAldrich]

How exactly do you plan to make algae that can survive 462 C heat, 93 atmospheres of pressure, and an obscene amount of sulfuric acid vapor?

For what it's worth, there's little to no sulferic acid vapor at the surface - it's so hot that the acid rain forms a virga and never actually reaches the ground.

 

[ICBM 16]

@Wiz Will you possibly be changing the Pre-sentient requirement for Uplifting back to no longer needing a colony on the planet with the species you wish to uplift? Question of curiosity.

 

[TheDungen]

They suggested this in 1961 before we knew enough about Venus to realize it wouldn't work.

To make mars livable with breathing masks all you need to do is heat up the surface enough to melt dry ice.

The gravity thing is the real sticking point, and I don't know where you're getting your information. What I can find on NASA's stance is that they're worried about the *prolonged weightlessness during the flight to Mars* but are confident that they can solve the problem by 2030.

No they are raising serious concerns about the 38% too, especially though after having suffered through a zero g flight there. Yeah we don't know for certain how bad it'll be but like I said every time they find a way to "test" (Things like adding limited "gravity" to cells on the ISS, and computer simulations as I understand it) it the reports haven't been hopeful. And again on Venus you start in the upper atmosphere where the temperature is 30-50 degrees Celsius and start capturing carbon there are carbon is captured the atmosphere grows less dense and colder and the carbon capture equipment will sink gradually towards the surface based on this. Remember earth air generates lift on Venus.

Oh and 1961 right? Never mind then that they proposed this manned research base there in 2015. I would say Mars colonization is way more of a dead horse trope at this point while Venus is coming back in to fashion as we abandon the idea of surface colonization.

How exactly do you plan to make algae that can survive 462 C heat, 93 atmospheres of pressure, and an obscene amount of sulfuric acid vapor?

Aerosolic algae that live in the upper atmosphere, where the temperatures range from 30-50 degrees Celsius, and I'm probably thinking sulpherophile ones, that means ones that use sulphuric compounds such as hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and sulphuric acid (H2SO4) instead of water for cellular respiration.
And please there are algae and bacteria living in black smokers, in the depths of volcanoes and in the frozen lakes on Antarctica. There are algae and bacteria that will thrive in any environment and that's only the result of random evolution, by genetic modification we can intelligently design them for the specific conditions they'll be facing.

Though there are several scientists who have pointed to readings of chemical imbalance in mars and suggested they may mean that colonies of such algae may already exist in Venus' upper atmosphere. If so our job becomes even easier, to find the bottleneck of the population growth of such bacteria and remove it.

For what it's worth, there's little to no sulferic acid vapor at the surface - it's so hot that the acid rain forms a virga and never actually reaches the ground.

No that's correct which actually makes the surface even less habitable, H2S (which forms the upper layer of sulphuric gasses on venus) and H2SO4 (whch forms the lower one) are the only sources of hydrogen on venus, they may be poisonous to life as we are used to it, but they are essential to life if any is to be seeded.
And also like I said aerosolic bacteria/algae is only one method of doing it. Placing huge versions of the carbon capture technology that are already being developed for our greenhouse effect in upper atmosphere habitats is another viable solution. Less elegant perhaps but if you filter out the sulphuric acid and add your own recycled water the CO2, heat and greater proximity to the sun makes Venus' upper atmosphere the best growing place in the solar system. You could grow energy crops to be turned into fuel for interplanetary flight. Or hydrocarbon materials, super advanced plastics and building materials.

The best solution is probably both. Start with using conventional carbon capture technology and then experiment with different kinds of bacteria in captured Venusian air while on site until you find something that works. Or discover that there is already life there and lend it a helping hand. At any rate Venu's problems are surmountable. And the first step is actually going there. Now if we could just stop wasting money on Mars.

 

[Milten]

Didn't you guys have this Venus/Mars ten pages long discussion a few dev diaries ago?

 

[TheDungen]

Didn't you guys have this Venus/Mars ten pages long discussion a few dev diaries ago?

Yup and I am perfectly happy to do it again if it helps people get just how crappy a target for terraforming mars is.

 

[Milten]

Yup and I am perfectly happy to do it again if it helps people get just how crappy a target for terraforming mars is.

That was educational first time, now it has nothing to do with this diary at all. Guess I'll simply report this as off-topic.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Doesn't matter if Mars makes sense for terraforming or not- terraforming Mars is a scifi staple so it gets into the game full of scifi tropes.

 

[CuddlyKitten]

Question: Can I still create Gulag worlds like this and prevent them from leeching food from the empire?

View attachment 246069
Under current rules, I can starve slaves as long as I am willing to deal with malcontent slaves and the fact that they won't breed without food.

Can I still do something like this? Or am I forced to feed all biological POPs in the empire?

Utopia seems to be focused around your Empire actually doing the things you tell it to do and not about exploiting mechanics to do stuff your Empire says its not doing.

So yes you can still starve/work slaves to death its a special kind of purge. But if you choose a slavery type where you say you want to feed the pops then your empire will feed them.

 

[TheDungen]

That was educational first time, now it has nothing to do with this diary at all. Guess I'll simply report this as off-topic.

Actually it was offtopic last time this time the devdiary actually mentions the terraforming of mars.

Doesn't matter if Mars makes sense for terraforming or not- terraforming Mars is a scifi staple so it gets into the game full of scifi tropes.

That's a vicious cycle though, if everyone just redo the things other have done nothing is ever improved upon, you need to be willing to push a bit ask more from your viewers/readers/players, and since hollywood is far to concerned with their bottom line small individual enterprises like Stellaris have a unique creative freedom... which they are choosing not to exercise.

 

[LambTaco]

I know I'm in the minority, but I never liked the idea of global food supply. At least not the simple way it's being implemented.

Firstly, it's boring. But more importantly, I'd reason the amount of food represented by one unit is orders of magnitude greater than energy or minerals in terms of sheer mass. People need to consume their weight in food, what? Once per month? Even counting materials used for infrastructure and assuming a vegetarian diet, the cost of transporting food between planets should be huge compared to the relatively negligible cost for minerals and presumably nuclear levels of efficient energy.

That isn't to say there should be no mechanism for transporting food between planets, or even solar systems. I just think there should be some associated cost, perhaps in energy, to offset the benefits of using farm worlds and keep things slightly more realistic. I don't know exactly how I'd want food transfer mechanics to work, only that it shouldn't be so simple.

On the other hand, I like the idea of being able to trade food with other empires, and the old system was only marginally more complex than the new one. Having to buy food when your farm worlds are blockaded. Or worse, conquered. And it can create interesting narrative possibilities such as an aggressive warrior race conquering some planets rather than building their own farms.

I'm sure there will be mods for this.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Didn't you guys have this Venus/Mars ten pages long discussion a few dev diaries ago?

Yes.

Venus is best. It's much easier to modify an atmosphere than to make Mars permanently habitable. Venus would probably be a prerequisite to Martian terraforming anyway.

 

[Kayden_II]

Yes.

Venus is best. It's much easier to modify an atmosphere than to make Mars permanently habitable. Venus would probably be a prerequisite to Martian terraforming anyway.

Science or Not: Nobody, whether I nor any bigger SyFy-Film/Series really cares about Venus in Comparision to Mars.

 

[Risa]

I don't know why there is a hype of "farm worlds". In new mechanism, each world can support its own pops (so has base line growth rate) by three or four food tiles (and one of them is frontier hospital so basically mandatory), just like now. And to achieve any significant higher growth rate, most of worlds would need to be farm worlds. Just one or two farm worlds won't provides enough surplus food to affect growth rate noticeable.